Having heard the representatives of the railway and water
transport organisations, and the representatives of workers of
metallurgical factories and the trade union of railway workers,

and having heard the proposal of these comrades to permit their
organisations, the Central Food Bureau of the Commissariat for
Ways of Communication, the Food Commission of the Chief Water
Board of the Commissariat for Ways of Communication, etc., to
carry out independent procurements,

the Council of
People’s Commissars insistently calls the at-tention of
all organised, class-conscious and thinking workers and working
peasants to the obvious unreasonableness of such proposals. It
is clear to everyone that permitting the Central Food Bureau of
the Commissariat for Ways of Com-munication, and food
commissions of the Chief Water Board, of the Chief Metal Board
and of the Chief Rubber Board, etc., to carry out separate
independent procure-ments would completely ruin the whole food
undertaking, would destroy every and any state organisation of
workers and poor peasants and clear the way for the victory of
the kulaks and Skoropadskys.

All workers and starving peasants must understand that only by
joint efforts, by organising hundreds and thousands of the best
workers in common food detachments, only by throwing the united,
combined, common, mass forces of the workers into the struggle
for order, for bread, is it pos-sible to overcome famine and
disorder, and defeat the profiteers and kulaks.

It is foolish to believe those who request independent
procni.cnien,t.,3 for the Central Food Bureau of the
Commissariat for Ways of Communication, for the Food Commission
of the Chief Water Board, heedless of the fact that in each
uyezd of the non-agricultural gubernias there are tens and
hundreds of thousands of starving peasants who for months have
received no grain at all.

Does it not spell ruin if the peasants in each uyezd are allowed
separate procurements? Is it really fair to give the Central
Food Bureau of the Commissariat for Ways of Cow-munication, as
it wants, 60 millions for independent pro-curements, without
giving each famine-stricken uyezd ten millions, without giving
it independent procurements?

Each railway workshop, every thousand office workers or water
transport workers or factory workers should put forward a
detachment of the best and most reliable persons in order by
their joint, combined efforts to promote the general
workers’ and peasants’ cause, that of salvation from
famine, of victory over famine.

Separate, independent procurements spell the ruin of the whole
food undertaking, the ruin of the revolution, collapse and
disintegration.

Enlisting the best and most devoted workers from each thousand
workers and office employees into detachments to form a general
working-class fighting force for inculcating order, for aid in
supervising, for collecting all grain sur-pluses, for complete
victory over profiteers-in that alone is salvation.

Endnotes

[1]
This document was written by Lenin in connection with requests
from various organisations to be allowed to procure food
independeiitly. On May 29, 1918, the appeal to workers and
peasants on the organisation of armed grain detachments, based
on Lenin’s Theses on the Current
Situation, was discussed at a meeting of the Council of
People’s Commissars in the presence of representatives of
these organisations. During the discussion, Lenin wrote the
People’s Commissar for Food A. D. Tsyurupa the following
note: “Is there going to he a struggle over
’independent procuring’? Perhaps not? Shall we
publish the attached in the newspapers, and in whose
name?” (Lenin Miscellany XVIII, p. 106). To this
Tsyurupa replied: “There will be a struggle. The attached
should be published in the name of the Council of People’s
Commissars.” “The attached” was the draft
appeal published liere. It was passed with slight amendments on
June 1 as a decision of the Council of People’s Commissars
and published on June 4 in the newspaper Izvestia VTsIK No . 112
under the heading “Decision of the Council of
People’s Commissars on the Question of Independent
Procuring”.